heretics being tortured and displayed, and concentration-camp
experiences. Some researchers delineate four different types of
trauma:
• Victim traumas: which are unhealed emotional, physical
and/or mental wounds which result from victim
experiences with a clear beginning and end (accidents,
rape, abuse, etc.);
• Aggressor traumas: which are generally unhealed
mental and/or emotional wounds
resulting from
traumatizing someone else;
• Accomplice traumas: which are generally unhealed
mental and/or emotional wounds resulting from allowing,
or jointly taking part in the traumatization of someone
else;
• Spectator traumas: which are mostly unhealed mental
and/or emotional wounds as a consequence of having to
watch the traumatization of someone else;
A trauma’s power derives from the energy of the suppressed
negative experience: pain, horror, fear, hatred, disgust, despair.
Traumas may lend a horrible and sometimes frightful taste to what
might otherwise be tolerable situations when these situations show
similarities to the original trauma.
If Doctor Mengele, or some other demented Nazi doctor,
tortured you as part of some diabolical medical experiment in a
past life, then, in this life, a Physician performing a routine medical
exam in his office might scare you half to death. If someone sees a
house burning down and loses control because they unconsciously
remember a fire in a past life in which they died together with other
people, the shadow of this horrible experience could loom up, even
if there’s nobody in the burning house in this life.